Memeorandum

April 08, 2012

The BS Runs Deep At MSNBC

All credit to Les Jones blog, which has uncovered a pattern of problematic production practices at NBC.

NBC has already fired an unnamed producer over the slanted editing of the George Zimmerman 911 call, which was clipped by NBC to be “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black” for the 'Today' show on March 27. [And Jeralyn Merritt, legal eagle and Lexis hawk, finds a transcript of a March 22 'Today' broadcast with the same bad Zimmerman edit.]

However, Les Jones shows us that on March 19 an NBC team in Miami ran the same problematic edit in the print version of their Trayvon Martin coverage:

On his call to police, Zimmerman called Martin, a junior at Krop Senior High School in Miami, “a real suspicious guy.”

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good … he looks black,” Zimmerman said, while calling police from his car. He said Martin was wearing a gray hoodie and had “his hand in his waistband.”

The bylines for that story are Christina Hernandez, Jeff Burnside and Edward B. Colby. And don't be fooled by the April 2 dateline at the top - the dateline at the bottom is Mar 19 and the Jay Carney "we here in the White House are aware of the incident" quote is from Mar 19.

As further evidence of the timing of the first story, a March 20 story updated and re-dated March 21 by Jeff Burnside uses the same "He looks black" edit and links back to the March 19 story. The video clips linked to the two stories do not use that phrase or discuss the Zimmerman 911 call.

Leaving us where? Per NBC senior executives, the Today Show edit was made in haste and repented at leisure:

As part of the investigation, the producer who edited the call was questioned extensively about motivation, and it was determined that the person had cut the video clip down to meet a maximum time requirement for the length of the segment - a common pressure in morning television - and inadvertently edited the call in a way that proved misleading.

Hmm, were time constraints also a problem in the website text presentation, with multiple updates over two weeks?

We also learned that

[NBC News President Steve Capus] said "several people" involved were disciplined, though he declined to specify the nature of the disciplinary actions, saying they were internal personnel matters.

UPDATE II: Jeralyn Merritt observes a lot using Lexis, incluidng an earlier broadcast of the "He looks black" edit by the Today show.

WHAT KIND OF RIGHT WING MACHINE ARE WE OPERATING? In late March Dan Riehl, writing at Big Journalism, noted the bum edit in the MSNBC version of the story. Newsbusters flagged their unannounced correction and isn't embracing the latest NBC explanations.

For reference here is the lead paragraph of both the uncorrected NBC6 Miami story linked above and the corrected MSNBC version:

A Sanford neighbor of George Zimmerman and fellow neighborhood watch captain in their gated community came to his defense Tuesday, saying that he shot Miami teenager Trayvon Martin after numerous burglaries at The Retreat at Twin Lakes.

The left hand doesn't know what the far left hand is doing.

WHAT WOULD A CLUE EVEN LOOK LIKE? Social media these days - what would the Twitter stream of a disciplined reporter look like? I don't know either.

--I see no legitimate reason to fire this "producer" and withhold his or her name.--

Maybe they're concerned the Daughters of the American Revolution will put a $10,000 bounty on him/her and bands of roving white grannies in tennis shoes and purses full of bricks will flood the streets.

Everything seems to be sunshine and lollipops in Tammy Delgado Twitter Land. All these journos have twitter streams. Ms. Delgado's happy-happy talk may be a ruse, or maybe we need to look for someone who seems to have gone dark the last several days. Jeff Burnside's Facebook page is similarly chipper. No mention in either of any recent unpleasantness.

Farrakhan, Jackson, Sharpton have until late August to start a race war of sufficient scale to warrant "their President's" declaration of martial law pursuant to his anti-Constitutional Executive Order (sic) of March 16th, directing D-rats' brown-shirt National Civilian Defense Force (NCDF) to fire 450-million rounds of hollow-point bullets into the chests of America's hated White Suburban Middle Class.

The basic function of journalism is to get to the truth,right?.The facts of this case point to Zimmerman being a racist,therefore a media outlet building a narrative to demonstrate that fact seems kind of...like the right thing to do.

I know,I know,i'm an asshole and a blah blah blah,but isn't it ironic that abiding by the cannons of journalistic integrity would have kept the public in the dark about Zimmermans motivation.That would have protected him from a possible hate crime prosecution.

"Your 'racist' has black friends and neighbors who speak glowingly of him. Your 'racist'tried to get justice for a homeless black man beaten by a policeman's son."

And Adolph Hitler had jewish friends,so what?

Sadly,because your premise is faulty your conclusion has to be rejected(again).

Question;Had Martin been a white kid carrying books to a study group would Zimmerman been suspiscious enough to call the police,suspicoius enough to track the white kid down?

Of course not.

So why Trayvon?What did Trayvon do to raise a red flag big enough for Zimmerman to alert the authorities and claim"They always get away with it".

Whoose "they" btw?

And 'get away' with what?You just can't assume that someones up to no good,you need something that raises your suspicion,an action of some kind.....was tm trying door handles,was he nervous trying to see if he was being watched????

No.He was walking through his neighbourhood.

SO what the hell made Zimmerman believe that a kid walking through his neighbourhood was possibly in the throes of commiting a freaking crime????What made him believe it sooo much that he had to call the authorities to the scene?

Was it his skin color?

You know being prejudiced is part of parcel of the human condition.We're all guilty of it.Georgie had nothing else to raise his suspiciouns apart from Trayvon himself.

From the "with friends like these, who needs enemies" department:http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/what-happened-trayvon-martin-explained#yougetcorn
``In an awkward TV interview with CNN, Frank Taaffe—himself a former neighborhood watch captain in the same Sanford subdivision—poured fuel on the racial fires by insisting that "young black males" were up to no good in his "neighborhood," where eight burglaries had occurred recently.
```All of the perpetrators of the burglaries, the prior burglaries, were young black males," Taaffe said. Pressed by Soledad O'Brien on how that related to Trayvon Martin's shooting, he replied, "Well, you know, there's an old saying: If you plant corn, you get corn."'
Seems very unlikely a jury would not take into account Zimmerman's statements about "assholes getting away" and his previous calls citing concern about black men when considering the question of whether Zimmerman was pursuing Martin with the intent to bring him to justice, or merely wandering around the complex as he waited for police to arrive….

In a search for evidence to support your bigotry, some "journalists" reviewed Zimmerman's past 7(?) calls to the police. In all of them, he didn't mention race until prompted, just like with St. Trayvon(tm).

The racists are the people who keep trying to make this about race, when it's not.

And 'get away' with what?You just can't assume that someones up to no good,you need something that raises your suspicion,an action of some kind

It was his job to watch for people up to no good, he was a Watch Captain. This WAS NOT Trayvon's neighborhood. He was from the Miami area, and Sanford is up around Orlando. It wasn't even his Dad's neighborhood. It was the neighborhood of his Dad's girlfriend and he was there, where he'd probably never been seen before, because he was on a 10 day suspension from school.

With a rash of robberies taking place in that complex, Zimmerman was hyper-vigilant and Martin ducking in and out and generally appearing erratic was enough to spark suspicion, so he did what he was supposed to do, he reported it to the police on the non-emergency line.

Not just denials, narciso -- the source of the claim is an "alternative media" blog from Miami, which cites an interview with a Detroit neo-Nazi. There's simply no evidence it's actually happening, and plenty of evidence it isn't. Yet it was picked up by wire services and has become international "pravda".

(This incident raises the question -- how do you distinguish a Detroit neo-Nazi from the city's official government?)

So Dublindave has just admitted that, yes, he knows that the media has made up lies to "prove" that GZ is a racist. But then he blithely goes on allowing himself to be convinced by what he knows to be lies that, yes, indeedy, those lies are "proof" that GZ is racist.

The amount of cognitive dissonance and sheer stupidity that that requires is truly mind-boggling.

i think the entire three and a half week later media story of this incident was a journalOlist operation. all the falsehoods; the twelve year old kid, the model student, the violent vigilante all were created to refute zimmerman's account of what happened. they had three and a half weeks to get the story correct and all they could come up with is a pack of lies. that had to be done deliberately nobody could make this many mistakes by accident in a news story.that includes CNN's own al sharpton!

it was reported that zimmerman made over forty calls to the police in a year. this was to prove that he was a raving vigilante out to get someone. then i read that the calls were made over an eight year period. does anybody know which story is correct and how many of these incidents resulted in a violent confrontation betwen zimmerman and the person he reported on.

I don't get my news from TV so maybe I've missed it, but there doesn't seem to be the same level of horror and outrage from the usual suspects over those tragic murders in Tulsa, which the shooters themselves have admitted were racially motivated--so no need to make up "facts" there. Five innocent men "walking while black" were shot by two white men, three of them are dead. Yet no wanted dead or alive posters, no bounties from the New Black Panthers, no media lynching. No protests and threatened riots. No Al Sharpton rushing to the scene.

Why not? And this is not a facetious question, by the way. I really wonder why not.

derwell: I haven't really followed that story, but I did hear today that they said the motivation was revenge. Apparently, for the murder of one of their fathers, not sure which one or what the circumstances were. I haven't followed closely enough to know if they also said racism was a motivation.

Anywone waiting for Tom's breathless recount of how the media "quietly" changed Martin's injury from a "broken nose" to a "bloody nose."?
Didn't think so.
The extent of Zim's injuries are at the core of this case, unlike his weight, how many 911 calls he made, and whether doctored video shows a welt, or a scrape, or a cut or nothing at all.
One would think the morphing of Zim's nose would bother Tom, a lot. Apparently not...

Don't keep us in suspense, Bunker. If you have new info on Z's nose, share it, with a link. The last I've heard was the neighbor's report the day after saying that Z's face looked pretty beat up. Bandaged nose, face quite swollen, especially on one side. Plus a bandage on his head that looked like it was covering a lump.

Why Z's attorneys have not released these pics is anyone's guess, but maybe they were ordered not to.

The Left isn't interested in the truth. Any lie which fits their narrative is better than the truth that does not, and they are only too happy to run with it, as we see above.

There has yet to be a single shred of evidence presented in this case which contradicts the account given by Zimmerman, and plenty of points of confirmation.

Despite his injuries, Zimmerman declined to be taken to the hospital and instead answered all the police's questions at the scene and then for several hours at the station, all without counsel. Ask any cop you know: there is NO WAY a guilty guy talks to the cops for hours without screwing up his story. Yet the Sandford Police concluded they not only didn't have a case, they didn't even have probable cause, which is why they requested a warrant from the prosecutor, who also refused.

Remember in Florida an arrest without probable cause is almost a guaranteed false arrest suit, and everybody from the cop to the city loses immunity.

That is simply an absolutely false statement.. What is at the core of this case is whether GZ had a reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm. Being knocked down by a punch to the face, then having one's head slammed against the pavement by the assailant, is more than sufficient to meet that test. One need not wait to receive serious bodily injury--or sny injury at all--for the right of self-defense to arise.

Tthe Lynch Mob grows more desperate--and sillier--by the day. What a joy to behold!

DoT asserts: ``the core of this case is whether GZ had a reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm.''
Talk about backpedaling! That's preposterous.
Zimmerman defense is that Martin knocked him down with one blow to the nose. If his nose isn't broken or significantly bruised, Zimmerman's claim is very hard to believe.
The alleged injuries to his head are even more important, given that Zimmerman's story -- reportedly -- is that Martin was thrashing his head against the sidewalk. If there is no significant bruising and cuts and/or scrapes on Zimmerman's head, it becomes extremely difficult for anyone to believe his life was under threat.
It's telling how quickly and easily DoT fantasizes about moving the evidentiary goal posts from physical evidence of a beating to unknowable Zimmerman's state of mind. Any port in a storm, I guess.
Sara: Don't be silly. If Zim's head didn't require a bandage right after the altercation, and the video of him entering the police station proves beyond anyone's doubt that it didn't, why in the world would it need one the next day?

"If his nose isn't broken or significantly bruised, Zimmerman's claim is very hard to believe."

Nonsense. I myself--and many others--have been knocked down by a blow to the face without sustaining a broken nose. Anyone who has ever watched boxing or MMA on TV knows that it is a common occurrence.

The goal posts remain exactly where they have always been: reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm. The two injuries, the grass stains and the eyewitness all corroborate GZ's account; nothing rebuts it.

Zimmerman's unknowable state of mind is irrelevant. It is the state of mind of a reasonable man under the circumstances that the law considers.

of course Zimmerman was pursuing Martin with the intent to bring him to justice... that's why he called the police!

iqvoice, don't encourage the bubu. As has been pointed out, "pursue" means with the intent to capture. There is no evidence GZ had such an intent. His instructions as a neighborhood watch person were only to call the authorities, and the evidence only shows an effort to keep an eye on TM.

DoT: You're conveniently ignoring that Zimmerman, reportedly, claimed he feared for his life. When you were knocked down by a nose punch, did you fear for yours? Do boxers fear for their lives when knocked down with a shot to the nose?
Again, the extent of Zimmerman's alleged injuries is crucial to the veracity of his claim that he feared for his life. If all a reasonable person had to fear from the alleged fisticuffs was a bloody nose and wounded pride, I hardly think a jury's going to sign off on Zimmerman's license to kill his assailant. Somehow I doubt that Zimmerman is going to try that defense out on the jury. He's going to have to say he feared for his life, otherwise, he's smart enough to know, it's unreasonable to gun down an unarmed teenager. Remember, it's going to be ordinary Americans, not gullible wingnuts like DoT, who make up the jury.
Maybe DoT did wish he'd been able to blow away the guy that punched him in the nose. He does have a record of violent fantasies here on JOM and that would explain a lot about his views…

Jimmyk, the problem is that it's great fun to encourage the bubu. Just look at the howlers he comes up with!

The Lynch Mob thought it had discovered the Great White Defendant. A few short weeks ago the opportunities for preening displays of moral superiority seemed limitless. Now it has all vanished, and they have only Al Sharpton and MSNBC to console them.

Bunker: I am not a doctor nor was I there. We have the eyewitness account that says that Martin was doing a beat down on Zimmerman and we have a witness who saw Zimmerman the following afternoon bandaged and bruised. Add to that the paramedic reports that he had a broken nose and a gash on his head. You can continue to deny, but apparently after many hours and many weeks of investigation, there is still no probable cause. You don't want to hear that, but that is what we know to date and that is the law.

What is your explanation as to why Martin did not continue to walk the few hundred feet to where he was staying, instead of circling back and attacking Zimmerman?

I have a theory. Martin was a typical 17 yr old guy. Full of himself, absolutely sure of his invincibility, and with a typical teenage chip on his shoulder where he probably thought Zimmerman had "dissed" him and he went back to teach him a lesson. His race would have nothing to do with it as I believe this is more a teenage thing than anything else. Even the best of 17 year olds don't always have the self-control that we'd like to see. Martin, apparently, had been demonstrating for quite sometime that self-control wasn't his strong suit. That doesn't mean that he deserved a punishment of death, but it certainly would be a factor that put him in a fatal situation.

When my kids were this age, I was sure I'd never get them thru it alive. When the hormones take over, the brain takes a vacation. Then one day you wake up and hear them talking about the "dumb" or "dangerous" things they did "as a kid" and you know they are on the way to adulthood. I shudder to think of some of the dumb things I did with my friends at that age. Fortunately, we never had to worry about guns and that type of violence, more like very steep hills marked "stay off - danger," which we ignored and tobogganed anyway. We had a bad crash and two of the six of us ended up with broken legs. I was lucky and only suffered a sprained wrist, but we shouldn't have been there and we could have all been killed. And I'm of the era of fast muscle cars and guys who liked to show off in front of us girls. Our motto was the same as Nick Romano's, "Live Fast, Die Young, and Leave a Good Looking Corpse." How stupid was that?

"You're conveniently ignoring that Zimmerman, reportedly, claimed he feared for his life. "

I do not ignore it at all. What I am telling you--and you seem incapable of understanding it--is that the jury will not be instructed to consider whether Zimmerman feared for his life. It will be instructed to consider whether a reasonable man would have feared, not necessarily for his life, but imminent great bodily harm. And he is not required to refrain from acting in self-defense until great bodily harm occurs.

"When you were knocked down by a nose punch, did you fear for yours?"

I did not fear either for my life or great bodily harm, because the man who did it was not a stranger, it was light ,and there many people present. (I take it you no longer contend that the fact Zimmerman's nose wasn't broken suggests that he wasn't punched in the face.)

"Do boxers fear for their lives when knocked down with a shot to the nose?"

No, because they know that there are trainers, handlers and police present. And they are constrained by rules to which they have agreed from defending themselves other than with their fists.

But in any event, you are simply incorrect in asserting that the extent of Zimmerman's injuries is "crucial." That is not the law.

And not only is Zimmerman not going to have to say he feared for his life, he is not going to have to say anything at all. If--and only if-- the prosecution puts on sufficient evidence that it was not self-defense to shift the burden to the defense (if there is any such evidence, I am not aware of it), the defense in rebuttal can play the 911 call, put the eyewitness and the paramedics on the stand, and place the police reports in evidence.

I invite you to continue to say stupid things about this case, bubu. As you can see, I relish responding to them.

This has been an eye-opener for people who didn't realize how morally low the average leftist is. Anyone reading this thread now knows that these are people willing to tell blatant lies, sacrifice innocents, foment hate and violence and more - all in the service of their political goals.

The question isn't what NBC did or why, but why they didn't think they'd get caught. Maybe it's because they do this kind of thing all the time.

I think that we are maybe making a bit of progress here with BB. His admission that it comes down to the injuries seems to mean that he accepts the rest of the well known facts, and isn't making them up any more. And, that his criticism is that Zimmerman shouldn't have been in fear of his life with such (he thinks) wimpy injuries.

I don't think that we can truly know whether Zimmerman was truly and reasonably in fear of his life. His injuries appear consistent with his head being beaten against the ground. When was Martin going to stop? We don't know, and neither maybe did he. Zimmerman's father has apparently said that his son told him that Martin said that he was going to kill him. Of course, that is the attorney talking... But, that would lend credence to a belief that the beating wasn't stopping anytime soon. Also supporting this was Zimmerman's almost contemporaneous statement to the cops that he was yelling for help, and no one came.

I don't really know if Zimmerman feared for his life or great bodily harm, and if that belief was reasonable. The problem is that almost of none of us have the evidence needed to make that decision. The police most likely have a most of it - including Zimmerman's long interview with the police right afterwards, the various 911 calls, the interviews with witnesses, the photos of the crime scene, etc. But, we don't, and neither does the press, and won't have until and if Zimmerman is tried for the death.

it was reported that zimmerman made over forty calls to the police in a year. this was to prove that he was a raving vigilante out to get someone. then i read that the calls were made over an eight year period. does anybody know which story is correct and how many of these incidents resulted in a violent confrontation betwen zimmerman and the person he reported on.

40 in a year might have been high. But over 8 years? I don't think so - he was working Neighborhood Watch, and that is what they do - call the cops to investigate anything suspicious.

Keep in mind that if he had been seen by the police as overusing the system, and calling 911 (or the police directly) too frequently, the priority of their response to his calls would likely have been downgraded. In this case, we do know that the police were already in route to the scene, in response to his call, when their call was changed from investigating a suspicious person to "shots fired".

At that, their response to his call(s) seems a lot more prompt than what I have seen in big city police departments for this sort of thing. Which is one reason not to live in that sort of place.

The evidence can come out without a trial. If Corey no bills the case, she can justify the decision by disclosing the evidence it's based on. If she charges Zimmerman, Zimmerman is entitled to discover and the state has 15 days to respond - then Zimmerman can put the evidence in the public eye along with the motion to dismiss the case for lack of probable cause that his use of force was unlawful.

I have a theory. Martin was a typical 17 yr old guy. Full of himself, absolutely sure of his invincibility, and with a typical teenage chip on his shoulder where he probably thought Zimmerman had "dissed" him and he went back to teach him a lesson. His race would have nothing to do with it as I believe this is more a teenage thing than anything else. Even the best of 17 year olds don't always have the self-control that we'd like to see. Martin, apparently, had been demonstrating for quite sometime that self-control wasn't his strong suit. That doesn't mean that he deserved a punishment of death, but it certainly would be a factor that put him in a fatal situation.

Likely true to some extent, but I will state the politically incorrect. There is a black/ghetto culture where violence is not only accepted, but almost worshiped. Reading Martin's tweats, in conjunction with his Twitter picture, seems to suggest that he was trying to participate in that culture. Someone asked how a high school senior could afford that gold plated grill of his. Maybe it was mowing lawns. Or, maybe it was burglary. We will probably never know.

But, if you look at the national crime figures, esp. as to murder rates, Martin had just entered the age of the, by far, highest rate of murder, and, unfortunately, the rates for Blacks there is many times higher than for other ethnic groups. Not saying that he was intending murder. We will never know that. But, there is a distinct possibility that it was more than just the stupid-years working to his disadvantage that night.

It will be very interesting to see what happens with Burnside and Hernandez. They wrote and co-wrote news stories which featured the altered quotes. They can't blame some middleman producer. If NBC fired a producer for the same offense, then these two have to be terminated, as well.

Not of the grand jury proceedings, as those are secret. But she can, if she chooses, disclose witness statements, 911 recordings, Zimmerman's statement, photos, other forensic evidence, etc. She would likely have to redact witness names and other identifying information in statements.

If she no bills without supporting evidence for the decision, she'll be adding fuel to a fire that has her in cahoots with police. That fire is going to start anyway, but it would wise for her to provide some water to put it out.

Well, Bubu has definately made progress. His first night of commenting on this case, he was convinced that Martin was shot in the back of the head, and that the state could force Zimmerman to tell his side of the story "under oath." He is still a long way from true understanding though.

Corey said she has never used a grand jury to decide on charges in a justifiable homicide case.

A grand jury is fairly well led by the presiding prosecutor, as it ends up the prosecutors chore to prepare the indictment and prosecute the case. Those details follow from the evidence, and proper application of the applicable law(s).

The press has been misrepresenting the evidence, the law, and application of the law to the evidence. Some people, Crump, BuBu, DuDa, KathyKumquat, etc. are similarly engaged in willful deception and misdirection.

Each grand juror is free to say publicly what he told the grand jury. I imagine that exculpatory witnesses in this case might be reluctant to do so, what with the lynch-mob fever generated by Sharpton et al.